


Any of us

by Kangoo



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Blind Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison, Kink Meme, M/M, Reaper76 is canon in my heart, Slight purple prose, hana-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-11-23 19:45:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11408949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangoo/pseuds/Kangoo
Summary: Here is an universal truth: everyone has a price.





	Any of us

**Author's Note:**

> Kink meme fill for this prompt: https://overwatch-kink.dreamwidth.org/679.html?thread=1134247
> 
> It got a little out of hand. Like, 1/6 of this is actually what the prompt wanted. Sorry?
> 
> I used the lockout elimination type of match because it seems more logical in context. Also: not proofread, I will come back to do that when I have the time.

“Behind you!”

 

 

Hana shoots the man who was sneaking up behind her in the head and nods at Jesse in thanks. He tips his hat at her, winks, and lands an impressive headshot on another Talon operative.

 

 

This is going well.

 

 

Too well.

 

 

Lena speeds down the street, leaving behind herself a trail of colorful confettis like a cloud of dust in her wake. She’s laughing, her two guns firing an uninterrupted stream of bullets as she jumps from an enemy to the other without, sometimes, checking they’re really dead. She kills another one and rewind, coming up next to Hana with a bright smile, barely winded.

 

 

“Heya, love!” She does a two-fingers salute before Morrison barks, ‘ _ Focus! _ ’ in her earpiece.

 

 

Then there’s a red dot on her forehead and the next thing Hana knows, she’s down and unmoving, and there’s blood all over her mech.

 

 

“Shit! Lena’s down.” Then, because it’s obvious but it bears saying still, “Sniper! Don’t get caught!”

 

 

“On it,” Jesse says, and he’s off to hunt them down.

 

 

Hana spares a quick look for Lena, sighs, and goes to meet back with the rest of the team on the payload before she suffers the same fate.

 

 

They’re against Talon — when are they not? — and, with such an effort put into stopping them, she’ll be very disappointed if the payload is anything but  _ solid gold _ . 

 

 

Through her earpiece she hears the roar of Reinhardt’s charge, then the sound of bullets hitting his armor and the mayhem of a fight, then nothing. Morrison calls, “Reinhardt down.” Then, lower, almost to himself,  “Always too overconfident.”

 

 

“Don’t trash talk the dead, Morrison,” Jesse replies, “It ain’t proper.”

 

 

“Kill that damn sniper and we’ll see about proper.”

 

 

“Yessir.”

 

 

Then, a moment later, “The sniper has been dealt with.”

 

 

“Nice shot, Hanzo!”

 

 

“Meet us at the point, both of you.” The commander has taken cover behind a wall while he calls out orders. Hana reaches him as he adds, “Be careful. Reaper’s here.”

 

 

Then he looks at Hana and says, “Let’s go, soldier.”

 

 

They go.

 

 

The MEKA has suffered heavy damages during this mission, but it’s still standing and at this point that’s all that counts. With Morrison at her back, it feels brand new: she feels  _ invincible _ .

 

 

Jesse soon joins the fray, gun ablazing, while Hanzo stays above it and shoots down their enemies one after the other. Working together like that, they slowly but surely pushes the payload forward, leaving a trail of black-clad bodies behind them as they go.

 

 

“Where’s Reaper?” Jesse asks, echoing Hana’s own confusion.

 

 

Morrison isn’t the one to reply, no. That’d be the shotgun fired right next to his head, barely missing him. A simple ‘Here’ would have been easier, and not above Reaper’s dramatical self, but who are they to judge.

 

 

“Fuck—” He throws himself down, but not fast enough: the next shot goes right through him, and he falls limp to the ground. He’s always a little slower against Reaper. She isn’t sure if it’s because he’s reluctant to fight him — unlikely but possible — or if it’s because Reaper knows him so well he’s always just a step ahead. 

 

 

“Jesse down!” Hana warns through gunfire, and it’s frustrating how it doesn’t seem to affect him in the slightest, save maybe for the slight difficulty he has moving with her shooting him like that.

 

 

Not that it matters much, in the end, because he’s close enough to shoot and still very much undead, and with the state her mech is in, a few shots of his twin shotguns are enough to take care of both MEKA and pilot.

 

 

“Hana down. Am engaging Reaper,” Morrison says to the radio, before everything dissolves into a firefight. 

 

 

“Understood. I am on the payload.”

 

 

And Morrison isn’t Jesse, isn’t Hana, isn’t any better or any worse than any of them — except he kind of is — but he has had years, decades even fighting next to Gabriel Reyes, and enough of the man survived into the monster that it’s him who’s one step ahead, this time.

 

 

In comparison, there is surprisingly little in common between Jack Morrison and Soldier: 76. The difference lives somewhere in the years he dropped off the map, in his eyes that have seen too much and see too little, now, in the way he moves like it pains him to walk this world still. It’s singular, and nothing Hana wants to get her nose into, no matter how interesting it might be. That here is history written in blood and she isn’t keen on learning whose blood it is.

 

 

(Might be Morrison’s. Might be Reyes’. Might be a little of both and something else altogether. There is nothing simple in these men and even less in their relationship: she  _ wants  _ to know, but she isn’t enough of a fool to go and ask one of them.)

 

 

Jack has Reaper on the ground before she realizes it, and he doesn’t lose a moment to say anything. He shoots him at point blank, right through his stupid mask.

 

 

It all started in blood. Might as well end in it.

 

 

Once it doesn’t seem that he’ll be rising from the grave anytime soon, he does say, “Someone had to do it. Might as well be me.”

 

 

Then the payload reaches its final destination, and the whole scene disappears in a blur of pixels.

 

 

Morrison doesn’t give them a second to breath, or himself, considering he’s the one who’s fresh out of a fight. They all had a little more time to come to term with their failure, what with their  _ death _ .

 

 

But he sure doesn’t give them a second to prepare for his arrival. The simulation is barely over that he turns to Lena and says, “You need to learn to focus.”

 

 

“Yes,  _ dad _ ,” She replies, looking like she’d like to roll her eyes but doesn’t dare. “You’ve told me before.”

 

 

“And I’ll keep telling you until you  _ listen _ . That’s the kind of attitude that gets you killed, Lena, and in the field it’s a little more  _ final _ .”

 

 

She doesn’t mention Reaper — it’s never a good time to mention Reaper. 

 

 

He looks at them and what he sees must be truly miserable, because he doesn’t add anything else but, “You’re dismissed.” They will hear his whole speech later, probably at dinner because they’re unlucky like that, but at least he has  _ some _ mercy.

 

 

Hana doesn’t wait for him to change his mind about it: she’s off to the showers before he’s quite done saying it.

 

 

_ \-- _

 

 

Overwatch was a military organization and Overwatch 2.0, as they like to call it, intends to follow in its precursor’s footsteps — in the way it functions if not in most other ways.

 

 

_ Military _ means _ soldiers _ , and soldiers need to be trained, and that training needs to be tested often enough that they don’t have the time to suffer from its possible weaknesses.

 

 

That’s at least the explanation Morrison will give to anyone who asks. Hana thinks it’s bullshit: she was — is — a soldier, too, but MEKA never made her do push-ups with one of her comrades sitting on her back, and it sure as hell never made her  _ fight _ them in combat situation.

 

 

Most agree with her. 

 

 

“Listen, I’ve been in a gang and I’ve been a Blackwatch agent, but Morrison’s lil’ training regiment haunts more of my nightmares than Reyes’ lesson on resisting torture,” Jesse tells her, blue all over from their earlier spare. She’s not any better: she feels pain in muscles she had no idea even existed in the first place. “Drill Sergeant Morrison is one thing I never regretted from the good ol’ days.”

 

 

“Remember how he would make us run with someone else on our back?” 

 

 

It’s Genji who speaks this time, his smile light and an echo of unspeakable terror in his eyes. There is more to the memory than just carrying someone on more miles than you can even walk by yourself: there is fear, the kind born from facing Jack Morrison that makes you choose Gabriel Reyes instead of Overwatch’s golden boy.

 

 

“ _ Do I _ remember hauling your cyborg ass down a hill in a storm?” Jesse barks a laugh — clearly, he is made of sterner stuff — and adds, “Reyes and Angie chewing his ass when that sent us to the medbay.”

 

 

Once they start chatting about the ‘good ol’ day’s, nothing can stop them. The two former Blackwatch agents throw snippets of their old life back and forth, about Reyes’ killer stare and how the Commanders were each other’s exception in most things. Their words are tainted with fondness and, as the minutes go by, melancholy. Nostalgia — a bittersweet regret for days they don’t quite regret all the time.

 

 

Hana isn’t too young to understand nostalgia. She knows what it feels like, to miss the time when your pain had a meaning greater than you. But this? This is not her memories to hold on to forever. These are pieces of a time she did not know, sharp like the jagged edges they left behind on so many of her friends. She has no business cutting herself on them.

 

 

She leaves.

 

 

\--

 

 

She could go chill on Lùcio’s bedroom floor —  _ soft words and softer music, like medicine for your soul _ — or play a video games or twenty, anything to help pass the time and to make her mind quiet.

 

 

She goes to the practice range instead.

 

 

(What? She’s a soldier. She may not have lived through the hell that was Strike-Commander Morrison using the new recruits as stress relief, but she’s about to live through back from the dead, vigilante Morrison trying to prepare them for the worst and it is likely to be worse. She will need all the help she can get.)

 

 

She can hear someone sparring, but her ribs still hurt from her earlier ‘death’ so she foregoes hand to hand for the moment and enters the VR training room for the second time that day.

 

 

It’s a masterpiece of virtual reality technology. She would kill to play video games in it but, sadly for her streaming dreams, it’s for professional use only. A girl can dream.

 

 

Well, as professional as fighting against AI-controlled 3D models of real people in randomly generated environments can get. You’d think it’s a fun way to train, but it’s about as enjoyable as fighting these people in real life, with less risk of fatal injuries. It’s even worse when Morrison makes them fight each others rather than Athena: there is a very important distinction between sparing with a friend and seeing their body hit the floor after you shot them. It’s frustrating and scary and painful and it just sucks a lot, Hana absolutely hates it.

 

 

She knows a few of the others don’t mind it as much as she does but no one, absolutely  _ no one _ enjoys it. Because being in a firefight against Talon operatives is one thing — one exhilarating, gruesome thing — but fighting against your comrades, your  _ friends _ , is another altogether. It’s scary, and painful, and it  _ sucks. _

 

 

Which is not a good enough excuse for Morrison who is, unexpectedly, even more of a hardass now than when he was the commander of an actual military force.

 

 

Hana could sigh, or pout, or complain, but she’s a soldier, so she shuts up and starts the simulation. She will complain to Lùcio later, though: he’s heard it a hundred times before, but he always listens.

 

 

Colors wash up over her and Athena greets her with her usual “Generating combat scenario... Please wait”. When the tingling of electricity disappears, she opens her eyes to the familiar streets of King’s Row. She’s alone — she’s not a fan of fighting alongside the AI, not matter how good Athena is, and she’s supposed to be able to work in solo anyway.

 

 

Her MEKA comes to life under her hands. That part is okay: it reminds her of sleepless nights spent in her dimly-lit room, eyes jumping between her three monitors. This isn’t quite the whirring of the fans of her computer, doesn’t hold quite the same familiarity, but it’s familiar enough.

 

 

She feels like demolishing bots, anyway, and a computer isn’t any good for that.

 

 

That’s she’s alone doesn’t mean she’s only facing one person: they can and  _ will _ face uneven odds in their fight against Talon, better get used to it fast. She’s been overwhelmed by unexpected bots before — Morrison says it’s good she’s learning this way rather than on the battlefield and it’s true she’s learned from the experience. She doesn’t let down her guard after the first bot, nor after the tenth or the thirtieth. She just keeps going.

 

 

She wishes the bots would explode rather than simply crumble to the ground in a heap of deactivated pieces, but Winston banned them from firing real shots in training and the cleanup would be hell, anyway. Hana is many things and a fan of cleaning is not one of them. 

 

 

Still, she can’t help but think it’d be just that much more satisfying to blow up everything with Talon’s insignia on it for a change. Not subtlety, no caution, no mercy for any of them — not even those with the face of people they used to know. And maybe it’s because she doesn’t have any history with them, not like those of the first Overwatch do, but it feels like an easier way of dealing with the problem.

 

 

Hana is a bit more of a strategist than that, though, so she doesn’t blow anything she hasn’t been asked to. 

 

 

She shoots two other bots in quick succession — she stopped counting around thirty, but she can always ask Athena about her score later — and is about calling it a day when there’s a thud above her. She has quick reflexes, and the MEKA is far from slow to react, yet she still doesn’t turn fast enough to block the hail of bullets that falls on her. The hull integrity falls from ninety-five to seventy-five percent before she throws the mech back and away from the fire.

 

 

This is not the usual cadence of a training bot — it’s too fast and it deals too much damages, anyway. She’s not as surprised as she ought to be: Athena has been known to raise the difficulty parameter of a simulation if she thinks the agents aren’t working hard enough.

 

 

(Morrison has a bad influence on her.)

 

 

And she can’t blow up the bots, sure, but one of the Champion AIs? Now that’s a victory with a bit more of a challenge to it.

 

 

Hana carefully backs away, as quiet as the mech can be, and assess her situation. She doesn’t know who she’s up against, but she can make an educated guess. It can’t be Reaper — thank god, but also: too bad — because, as much as he likes to throw his empty shotguns around, he would rather die again than take up an assault rifle. Widowmaker is possible, although unlikely: it seems like a waste of Talon’s resources to put so much effort into brainwashing and training a master assassin just to not have her take an easy shot with her sniper and, as much as she hates them, Hana has to admit they’re  _ smart _ . So it’s either Sombra or — well, it could also be a Talon operative they’ve already dealt with or hell, Athena also has datas from the first Overwatch and those can always be used as a general training exercise, when she’s not feeling like preparing them for one particular threat.

 

 

(It could be anyone but Hana is a soldier and a pro at StarCraft. If her quick thinking was enough for MEKA, it will be for Athena’s pet AIs, too.)

 

 

Her mystery opponent use an assault rifle but if they’re in the simulation, they must have a few tricks up their sleeve as well. She will have to keep that in mind before rushing in.

 

 

(She always rushes in, but in her defense she’s just better at thinking up strategy while in the middle of a firefight. Something about working better under pressure.)

 

 

With a vague idea of a plan in mind, Hana cracks her knuckles and grips her joysticks a little firmer.

 

 

“Game on!” And maybe it’s not such a good idea to speak up but who cares, if her voice didn’t already reveal her position then the noise her mech does absolutely will, so she might as well have fun while betraying the very  _ idea _ of stealth by simply existing.

 

 

She’s still careful, though. The enemy ran off once she got out of their line of fire and they might be anywhere. In the silence of virtual-King’s Row, the heavy  _ thud _ of her MEKA’s steps are all too easy to track down, a fact she intends to use at her advantage. She doesn’t know who she’ facing or where they are but she knows they’ll come to her soon enough, and she’ll be more ready for them than their little AI brain will be for her.

 

 

She has fought omnics before. She knows how to bait a machine.

 

 

There’s a sound above her, in one of the building lining up the street. She’s not facing them here, though. She gots to get them out in the open.

 

 

The MEKA surges forward and Hana already has the defense matrix up and running, turning to face the enemy—

 

 

She stumbles.   
  


 

Well, no, the mech doesn’t need her to balance itself as long as no outside force works against it. It stands upright just fine. Rather, she falters. Her heart misses a bit and her breath sticks in her throat and— 

 

 

It’s Morrison, up there.

 

 

Hana was ready for anything. Except facing against one of her own, apparently.

 

 

(She has done it before, fighting someone she knows. It’s only a simulation. It’s  _ fine _ .)

 

 

Her hesitation lasts only as long as the defense matrix does. As soon as it falls, she is once again ready, heartbeat as steady as her mech. She presses forward, a rain of bullets of her own that sprays the walls and the ground and, by the sound of it, her original target, too. He backs down and disappear in the building.

 

 

Her boosters carry her up to the vacated balcony and into the empty room behind it like a rocket. She can hear the sound of someone running even through the roar of the engine and she’s not far behind. 

 

 

Hana chases the AI down King’s Row and up again, exchanging bullets and answering his artificial silence with swears and useless taunts. Try as she might, she just cannot get rid of him: she loses him a few moments and he’s back up again, with the glow of a biotic field fading from his skin the only proof she ever dealt him any damage at all.

 

 

But she knows Morrison well-enough to count them down. He only carries five at all time: she asked, once. He would take more, but he simply doesn’t have enough space on his person for that. 

 

 

By the fourth one, her HUD flashes red, her hull integrity is down to a mere twelve percent, and she feels  _ alive _ .

 

 

The AI runs down the narrow side-streets of King’s Row, always a step ahead. She’s hot on his heels and alternating between raining bullets and hellfire on him and trying to keep up with her boosters. It’s not a stalemate, not quite yet.

 

 

One of her bullets tears through his jacket and go right through his shoulder, coming out the other way in a spray of blood. They are perfectly real — although blanks — and he’s only a billion pixels given a false sense of matter by virtual reality, but it feels good to see him falters and ducks into a corner. It feels like winning, a little bit.

 

 

Then a helix rocket flies into her face and reminds her not to celebrate her victory before the enemy is down. It’s a bad habit of hers.

 

 

She does not have the time to dodge — didn’t expect to, either. Her mech doesn’t quite explode, but it deactivates as soon as its health bar gets to zero. It will stay that way for as long as it would take to dispatch a new one in real combat situation, which means  _ forever _ .

 

 

And she has a gun, but it’s practically useless — it’s the only thing she can actually carry, in the mech. A few hits and she’ll be a goner. She could still call it quit: the reason this simulation exists is to give them a chance to survive this kind of mistakes and learn from them without suffering the consequences. In her present state — tired, hungry, bruised all over — it would the wise thing to do.

 

But Hana is smart, not wise, and she sure isn’t the kind who backs down from a challenge. You don’t get to where she is today in competitive video games without being as stubborn as you can get, after all. 

 

 

(You don’t defeat a boss by giving up after losing ninety-nine times — you do it by trying a hundredth time, and then again and again until it  _ works _ , no matter the odds and the hundred failures before that one victory. It says a lot of Hana that she enjoys punishing games the most.)

 

 

She’s quicker on her feet this way.

 

 

As she suspected, the rocket was a diversion: by the time she reaches her target, there is no more biotic field to be seen on his person.

 

 

No more tricks for either of them.

 

 

She empty a clip in his direction and ducks behind a wall to avoid the answering fire. Everything feels more real when she’s out of the mech, like she’s not as immortal as she thought she was.

 

 

It feels like peace, an odd kind of it, when it settles in her bones.

 

 

But Hana is going nowhere just hiding there and she knows it. For her gun to do anything, she needs to get closer.

 

 

She runs from cover to cover and the AI lets her. She doesn’t question it.

 

 

(She doesn’t question why Reaper always seem to miss Jesse the first time, either.  _ Warning shots _ , her mind supplies, and she ignores it because AIs don’t give warning shots.)

 

 

There’s no hope in using close-quarter combat against him — he’s bigger, heavier, better trained and pumped full of super soldier juice, she won’t risk it — but, if she’s quick about it, she can probably get a headshot there and be done with it.

 

 

She peaks out of cover long enough to aim — a fraction of second, not even a breath, long enough to become a target herself — and fire.

 

 

It misses. Not by much, but enough. She swears and try again. She looks at her target behind his own cover, aim, and—

 

 

_ Click _ .

 

 

Close quarter it is.

 

 

He notices her magazine is empty about the same time she does but he doesn’t have the time to shoot himself. She throws the now useless gun at him and it hit him square in the face, hard enough it throws his head back.

 

 

Good, gives her an overture.

 

 

She’s on him before he can fully recover, and she aims for the rifle. His grip on it loosened just a bit — she doesn’t give him enough time to correct this mistake. She closes both her hands over the too-hot metal and pushes,  _ hard _ .

 

 

Something cracks when the butt of the gun collides full-force with the underside of his jaw and he lets go of his weapon. The silence is unnerving: anyone would have let out a yelp at least, because with a blow like that he’ll be seeing stars for a while. It might be worse if the AIs spoke with borrowed voices to go with their borrowed faces, though.

 

 

The pulse rifle is awkward in her arms, too big and heavy for anyone but a super soldier, burning hot from too many shots fired in a short amount of time. But it still has ammunitions and at that point that’s all she needs, so she keeps it close to herself and keeps a finger on the trigger while she walks around the staircase he’d been hiding behind.

 

 

She finds the AI sprawled on his back, his hand covering his face and blood dripping between his gloved fingers. His tactical visor lays next to his head in pieces. With that angle, the blow might just have broken both the already fragilized mask and his nose. She’s kind of proud of it.

 

 

He tries to sit and she puts an end to this idea quick by pinning him with her foot on his chest. Slowly, like he’s tired — computers don’t get tired but people do and if there’s one thing this AI is good at, it’s imitating people —, he lets his hand falls limp to the ground. Jack Morrison: Game of the Year Edition, beaten. She stares at this rare sight.

 

 

Baby blue eyes stare right back, unfocused and maybe a little cloudy, underlined by finger-shaped smears of blood where his hand was a second ago. This is a face she knows all too well, one she has seen eating and sleeping and staring of into space with a pained, bitter smile and restless fingers along old scars.

 

 

(She’s never seen from the other end of a gun before.)

 

 

It’s his voice that tells her to take the shot. She’s heard him say it so many times her finger twitches on the trigger by sheer reflexe.

 

 

Hana doesn’t fire. Instead she says, “Athena. End the simulation.”

 

 

“Understood.”

 

 

King’s Row and blank eyes dissolve in pixels. Her hands fall to her sides, empty and hitching with the phantom weight of a pulse rifle.

 

 

She abandons her training MEKA for Athena to pilot back in his closet and walks out, feet dragging and mind blissfully blank with exhaustion.

 

 

\--

 

 

Because her life is a joke, Morrison — the real one — is waiting in front of the training room. He leans casually against the opposite wall, arms crossed over his chest, but she feel his eyes drill into her even through his visor. Nothing in his stance says anything about what’s on his mind: after what just happened, it’s somewhat comforting.

 

 

He looks at her in absolute silence for long enough that she starts to fidget, fingers tapping a restless rhythm on her side. Only then does he say matter-of-factly, “You should have taken the shot.”

 

 

“Gee, thanks, I’d never have guessed that one myself.”

 

 

Years of prolonged Jesse and Lena exposure must have done something to his patience because he is the embodiment of calm in the face of the younger recruits’ snark and insubordination. Or maybe he’s just learnt to ignore them. It wouldn’t surprise her, what with how he continues like he hasn’t even heard her. “In a real fight, your hesitation would have gotten you killed.”

 

 

“Aw, you  _ do _ care!”

 

 

“Hana. Why didn’t you take the shot?” He doesn’t sound disappointed but genuinely curious.

 

 

She’s tired, and hungry, and everything hurts, but his insistence on the subject riles her up more than she thought it would. She bristles. “Why?  _ Why _ ? I— Damn it, Morrison. I couldn’t do it. Is that what you wanted to hear?” She makes a sound of pure frustration, low in her throat, and ends up tugging on a stray strand of hair — a nervous habit she never managed to get rid of. “I couldn’t do it. I shouldn’t  _ have _ to do it. There’s not point, it’s not like I’ll ever be in that situation! It’s—” The word ‘useless’ burns her tongue and stays there, halted by the image of an owl-skull mask flashing in her mind. 

 

 

She wonders if Morrison wishes he had trained for that.

 

 

The man pushes himself from the wall and doesn’t reply to her not-question. He walks away, stops and, without turning his head, asks — demands —, “Come with me.” 

 

 

She does.

 

 

\--

 

 

He sits her at the kitchen table and goes rummaging in the cupboards. She lets the white noise of clinking dishes disappear in the background and zones out for a bit. She notices, distantly, that it’s pitch dark outside. She must have been in that simulation for longer than it felt like. No wonder she’s so tired: she spent the whole day running around and shooting things. And she must have missed dinner.

 

 

As if summoned by that mournful thought — and her grumbling stomach —, the man itself appears at her elbow and puts down on the table a steaming cup of green tea and a box of cookies, no doubt fished from the back of a cupboard, where Jesse thought it would be well-hidden. He has taken his visor off at some point and he looks surprisingly vulnerable like that, softer in a way she can’t quite place. He sits on the opposite end of the chair and takes a sip from his own mug — coffee, by the look of it, probably spiced with something a little stronger. She curls her hands around her cup, grateful to have something to keep her hand busy with.

 

 

They sit like that for a while, Hana nibbling on her snack and occasionally taking a sip from her over-sweetened tea — just how she likes it — while Jack slowly downs his coffee. He waits until she looks less likely to keel over from low blood sugar before he speaks up.

 

 

“It happened before.”

 

 

She looks up sharply, surprised — she wasn’t expecting him to say anything. “What?”

 

 

“Back there, you said it was useless to get ready to take down one of us. But it happened before.”

 

 

She says, with as much conviction as she can put into words, “But we’re better than that.  _ You’re _ better than that.”

 

 

“We very much are not. Listen, kid— ”

 

 

“I’m not a kid, I’m a  _ soldier _ . We  _ all _ are. Stop treating us like we’re time bombs!” She gestures angrily with her free hand, exhaustion gnawing at her nerves.. “We’re not going to turn on you as soon as we can. This is not going to crash and burn again.  _ You are not Reyes _ .”

 

 

“Hana.” 

 

 

She refuses to back down. She is tired of training, tired of shooting her friends and having to pretend it’s alright. “Jack.”

 

 

“Hana,  _ listen to me _ .” There’s an edge to his voice, sharp and vicious like something broken, the echo of a growl. Her mouth clicks shut and she flinches back a little in her chair. He sighs and it sounds about as heavy and tired as she feels. “Gabriel was a good man. I trusted him with my life and he  _ deserved _ it. That he of all people could fall like that is only a proof that anybody can.”

 

 

“He wasn’t a paragon of virtue, Jack, and you know it. I’ve heard stories, from Jesse, of Blackwatch and what they did there. That wasn’t the work of a good man, Jack. With the shit he did, it was bound to happen.” It being— what? Murder, betrayal, fire and shadows?

 

 

His eyes lose their flame and he seems to deflate in one breath. He turns his head and looks through the window, like Reaper might drag himself out of the shadows out there to add his piece. “Everybody has a price, or a weakness that can be exploited. Gabe was the best of us and they twisted him until they could make him an offer he couldn’t refuse, and they can do that to anyone.” After a pause, like he knows she won’t be convinced by anything concerning Reyes, he adds, “Amélie.”

 

 

“What?” She lost him again, and it’s getting old.

 

 

“Amélie Lacroix. You might have heard of her, from Lena mostly. She was nothing like us — a ballerina, only dragged in this mess because she married one of our own. Gérard.”

 

 

“What happened?”

 

 

“Gérard was singlehandedly dragging Talon to hell and they did not like it, so they kidnapped his wife from right under our nose. I still don’t know what they did to her while we tracked her down, but whatever it was, it changed her.” He takes a second to refills his mug and gulps down half of it immediately, like it’s not approximately the temperature of the sun and hot enough to burn the taste buds right out of his mouth forever. “It took us two weeks to find her and it — it broke him, to see the pain she had gone through. He had been powerless to stop it, and the guilt was eating him from the inside.”

 

 

“Was that— too much? Did he leave because of that.”

 

 

“No. He was dead a week later, and Amélie gone again.”

 

 

Realization dawns on her. “Widowmaker.”

 

 

“ _ That’s _ why I’m pushing you to your limits, Hana. You may find it useless to be prepared to face Lùcio, or Jesse, you may think they’ll never turn against you, but here’s the thing: you can’t stop those things. Everyone has a price.” He looks at her and he’s serious, more serious than death itself. He’s afraid, too, a bit: she can see it in his eyes. “You must be prepared to fight any of us. Even me.”

 

 

“But—”

 

 

“ _ Especially _ me.”

 

 

“What?” She’s getting tired of repeating that, like a broken record. “You’ve seen it happen — you’re the most prepared of us all. You wouldn’t do something like that!”

 

 

Unexpectedly, his faces loses a bit of its seriousness, replaces it with darkness behind his eyes. “I have a price like anyone else, and — there is a monster with the face of the man I loved on the other side of this war, kid.” She let it slide this time. “It’s probably lower than most. I would do anything to bring him back and they know it, and I know they know, and it makes me a liability.”

 

 

Hana finishes her tea and keep her eyes glued to the bottom of the cup. Silence stretches. He lets her think about it and pull herself together, and wait patiently for her to speak.

 

 

When she does, it’s with a question. “How do you do it?” He lifts an eyebrow slightly in confusion, and she precises, “I saw you this morning, when you took down the Reaper AI. How— how do you do it?”

 

 

He leans on his arms crossed on the table and also looks down, into his half-drunk mug. “Gabriel Reyes and Jack Morrison were best friends, and they were in love, but they both died in an explosion a decade ago and their relationship went up in flames with the base. It’s easier to think he’s not who I remember him to be. He’s just a ghost. A monster hiding behind a familiar face.”

 

 

“Is it, although? Easier, I mean.”

 

 

He huffs a laugh, but it sounds sad still. “No. Never. But we’re so used to hurting each other, it’s second nature now. I think the pain is what keeps me alive, at this point. I can’t talk for him. Knowing him, he might just be alive out of spite.”

 

 

They stay silent for a very long time after that.

 

 

He is the first to move. He gets up, puts his cup in the sink and pats her shoulder lightly on his way out, calm and collected, like he didn’t just bare his heart to her for a moment. “Get some rest, kid.”

 

 

After a time, she follows him.


End file.
